Frank Murkowski: Appointing Daughter Lisa and a Record 19 Percent Loss

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Frank Murkowski was born in Seattle in 1933 to a family of Polish descent, graduated from Ketchikan High School in 1951, and earned an economics degree from Seattle University in 1955. He served in the Coast Guard aboard the cutters Sorrel and Thistle, and his daughter Lisa was born in 1957. He rose fast in banking, becoming Alaska's commissioner of economic development at 33 in 1966 and president of the Alaska National Bank of the North by 1971. After losing a 1970 House race to Nick Begich, he won a Senate seat in 1980 over Clark Gruening, then won three more times, including 75 percent of the vote in 1998, and chaired the Energy and Natural Resources Committee from 1995 to 2001.

In 2002 he ran for governor and beat Fran Ulmer with nearly 56 percent, then used his power to appoint Lisa Murkowski to his vacated Senate seat, a move widely condemned as nepotism. His term brought a legislative lawsuit over his attempt to sign a natural gas pipeline deal without approval, a $2.7 million state jet purchase, and federal charges against his former chief of staff over a VECO Corp. funded poll. In the 2006 Republican primary he finished third with 19 percent behind John Binkley and Sarah Palin, the worst primary result for an incumbent Republican governor in U.S. history.

• In 1993 he opposed lifting the ban on gay service members by citing projected costs to the Veterans Administration.
• Lisa Murkowski later voted to repeal that ban and endorsed same-sex marriage while holding his old seat.
• Despite opposition from the legislature, he bought a Westwind II jet in 2005, and Palin campaigned on selling it on eBay.
• His former chief of staff Jim Clark was charged with honest services fraud over a $10,000 poll paid for by VECO; the charges were later voided.
• He considered a comeback run for governor in 2018 but decided against it.